IPCC: Warming cost are small and less than costs of forcing carbon abatement

The IPCC is rolling out its “Fifth Assessment” horse-choker Working Group papers and slim-line Summaries for Policymakers.

In this era where film stars with carbon footprints 100 fold those of common folk exhort us to reduce consumption levels to save the world, the fascinating question is ‘How much damage does the IPCC think a doubling of carbon dioxide levels brings and what is the cost of measures to prevent this doubling’?

The IPCC puts the warming from the anticipated doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide at between 1.5 and 4.5 degrees (perhaps in response to 17 years of the planet refusing to warm in defiance of the climate models, the lower boundary was reduced in the present Assessment). The most respected of all climate scientists, MIT’s Richard Lindzen, estimate the maximum warming possible for human induced greenhouse gases is 1 degree.

The IPCC lists only three post-2008 studies that attempt to estimate the net losses from global warming as a result of doing nothing.

Of these

(Nordhaus 2008) estimates a loss over the next 50 years of 2.5 per cent with a 3 degree warming.

Bosello et al have a 0.5 per cent loss with a 1.9 degree warming.

Rosen and van der Mensbrugghe have a 1.8 per cent loss for a 2.3 degree warming and a 4.6 per cent loss for a 4.9 degree warming.

There is also a lot of guff in the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment about some possible scenarios where much higher warming takes place but this is about as likely as little green men being sighted in a Mars probe.

The hysterical Summary for Policymakers glosses over the numbers and concentrates on the scary rhetoric, an outcome that led to the resignation of Richard Tol, co-chair of a key Working Group and one of the few non-socialist economists involved in the IPCC. This was followed by the predictable green left’s spleen-venting reaction to an apostate.

So, the angst and tens of thousands of scientists, politicians and other green warriors jetting from world city to world city to mingle, trumpet and convive is all about preventing a loss over 50 -100 years of about half to one year’s annual growth in world income levels. And the calculus of doom massively overstates the losses from warming (magnifying ocean rises, the need for new infrastructure, losses from tourism, the great rainfall shrinkage, inventing dengue fever outbreaks, new security scares, etc.) while downplaying plant and food growth from more atmospheric carbon dioxide.

Having been forced to acknowledge that the much feared global warming has only a trivial effect on real levels of human welfare, the IPCC has to ensure that its estimates of the costs its pursuit of the New Jerusalem are not too great. Forcing a radical transformation of society by banning the use of oil and coal and demanding that we reduce energy consumption and shift to horrendously expensive renewables and mythical technology like carbon capture and storage is depicted as a cake walk, made difficult only because myopic politicians fail to recognize that industries and consumers can do without low-cost energy.

But even in the heroic assumptions about shifting to the mythical low-cost new energy technologies and saving energy by using less of it, the researchers are unable to torture the data to reveal the same level of trivial costs of forced emission restraint as are evident in the costs of doing nothing. It turns out that the costs of policies like forcing Australia and other developed nations to reduce carbon emission to 20 per cent of current levels does not come cheap, even though the modelers gloss over the fact that the replacement for fossil fuels is horrendously expensive and would bring de-industrialisation. Economic modelers can only bend facts so far and, even with an optimistic gloss on taxes and regulations, they cannot avoid coming up with an emission suppression cost of 2.7 per cent in 2050, a cost that is amplified threefold if the carbon capture and storage does not work, nuclear is phased out and the renewables cannot take more than 20 per cent of world energy.

Bottom line. If global warming is taking place it will not be very harmful. If it is taking place, attempts to prevent it, even if politically feasible in a multilateral world of nations with different interests, would cost more than any damage the emissions may be causing.

185 Responses to IPCC: Warming cost are small and less than costs of forcing carbon abatement

Bottom line. If global warming is taking place it will not be very harmful. If it is taking place, attempts to prevent it, even if politically feasible in a multilateral world of nations with different interests, would cost more than any damage the emissions may be causing.

David Friedman has put up a couple of blogs posts on this very subject too. Away from the nonsense spouted by the likes of the porn novelist, Doc Pach and his buddies… deep in the report… David suggests there’s nothing really troubling about it and large parts of it are quite sober.http://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com.au/

Even with the IPCC’s (now discarded) estimates of 5-6 degrees of future warming, most sensible economic analyses demonstrated that trying to mitigate greenhouse gases would lead to net costs and that the only rational response to AGW was to adapt to it if and when it happened.

Of course, the climate catastrophists on the Left ignored these conclusions because they never were interested in finding the most economically efficient way to respond to climate change. Rather, their agenda always was to find a pretext to de-industrialise our economies and transfer wealth to the developing world.

One can only be bemused about the latest predictions of the temperature rise without a good mathematical correlation relating it to greenhouse gases and carbon dioxide in particular. As such if there is no valid relationship then any amount of carbon tax will achieve nought; that is the science. So what if temperatures have rise one degree this past century as it was pretty cold during the mini ice age, much colder than Medieval and Roman times.

It’s a pity that many people do not understand the critical role of carbon dioxide in life: it is the basis of the photochemical reaction called photosynthesis where it is converted into carbohydrate by green plants upon which all life is dependent, and it also provides oxygen for us to breathe. Most of this activity happens in the oceans with the phytoplankton and a little more temperature and carbon dioxide is decidedly beneficial for all even if they don’t understand it.

Like the NDIS, silly and sinister attempts to “prevent” CAGWarming would result in 60% of the cost being consumed by administration. The remaining 40% will have absolutely zero measurable effect. A perfect outcome for the Labor Green comrades whose agenda is about the State and micro control, not temperature.

Why muck around with models and estimates (guesses) when there is an abundance of empirical evidence out there?
Simply calculate the loss of GDP of the US since ~1770 due to a rise of about 1C in the global temperature, or China since 1980 as a result of a rise of about 0.5C.

Warming costs are small and less than costs of forcing carbon abatement

FFS, I’ve been saying this for over a decade, once the unrelenting waste inherent in abatement policies started to become obvious.

The incredible amount of wealth destroyed by this absurd sham is an almost incomprehensible obscenity. There are thousands of people across the globe who should be languishing in gaol as a result.

Naturally Rabz. Because the hysteria, the scam, the pseudo-science has never overwhelmed those of us (like here, WUWT, Jo Nova and similar) who have our thinking caps on, and who take a dim view of apocalyptic doomsayers.

As a Christian, I stand apart with an entirely different world-view. I see a cosmos created in balance but with humanity capable of doing some damage. I see Earth as a planet specially made to suit life as we see it, with scope for development but within limits, because I acknowledge God as the One to Whom we are all accountable for how we live.

But it is incredibly hard for people who don’t have the separate perspective to think outside the box. “Sheeple” is sadly a most apt and pungent expression for them.

And yes, there is a significant body of people who clearly should have known better and who should be held to account for their deception, their suppression of the truth, and especially their raw arrogance at wanting to decide for everyone else. To adapt a line from a film somewhere: “They are not Philosopher-Kings – they are very naughty boys and girls”.

Only 14 estimates of the total damage cost of climate change have been published, a research effort that is in sharp contrast to the urgency of the public debate and the proposed expenditure on greenhouse gas emission reduction.

It is curious that only one or two more studies were done since 2009.

Tol’s reason for the lack of studies include governments do not like what economic research says about the costs and benefits of global warming so they pre-emptively do not fund it.

Bottom line. If global warming is taking place it will not be very harmful. If it is taking place, attempts to prevent it, even if politically feasible in a multilateral world of nations with different interests, would cost more than any damage the emissions may be causing.

Please, can we somehow force-feed this to politicians everywhere?
Someone read it out in Parliament? Or at least point to the issue via using the IPCC’s own Report?

Hey Jupes, I agree with you re ‘God’ (can’t seem to find any ‘faith’ myself, so I remain agnostic) but let’s not have any ‘raw arrogance’ ourselves about slamming the beliefs of others. John is entitled to see things within his own belief system. He uses non-religious arguments about the IPCC and climatic issues.

They must know it’s over. The media must know it’s over. The people have some idea that it’s over.

You do wonder what sort of exit strategy they are putting together.

I unfortunately read the comments on a nine an article on cyclone ita. The article had the usual vox-pop from some climate-worrier – every single comment was scathing about linking cyclones to climate change.

As a political issue, climate change is deader than a dodo. It most definitely is over. The only thing left is for politicians to walk back from their earlier promises and professed beliefs.

One the carbon tax repeal is passed in Austrlaia no major party will ever go to an election with a new climate pricing policy. Support for the RET is likely to wane in the meantime, and hopefully we will get some relief from that.

The cohort of people who are about climate change is about the same size as people who want open borders – noisy but very, very small.

Its essentially what ive been saying. But I get called a denier lol. I don’t deny anything of course there is climate change its always been changing its just that it doesn’t matter. Humans adapt we always have and the only thing that will harm us is any attempt to slow progress which is what the Greens want.

So if ‘climate change’ no longer works as a tactic to argue for more government intervention, what’ll be the next scare campaign? The left keep trying to push their neo-Malthusian lines about population control, but they never get much traction due to their blatant anti-human element. I reckon the search is on for a big, vague threat to destroy us all.

Supporters of AGW will never cease; see professor Doherty on Lateline. There are 1000′s of fat headed elitists like him ready to trade on their prestige to promote their belief.

The IPCC is the foundation of this belief and despite being torn to shreds by the IAC in 2010, having its corrupt underbelly exposed by the emails and having NO prediction eventuate at all is still relied on by said fat-heads to influence equally fat-headed media outlets, particularly the abc, to keep this ‘narrative’ going.

And the increase in CO2 is most likely not due to humans anyway; so even if you believe the non-existent connection between CO2 and temperature humans aren’t causing the increase.

Despite this we still persist in having correlative discussions about cost/benefits ratios and fucking renewables. You cannot analyse a cost/benefit for something which doesn’t exist and renewables don’t work.

If AGW gets any more surreal they’ll make an episode of the Twilight Zone about it.

jupes
#1265635, posted on April 15, 2014 at 7:30 am
They must know it’s over. The media must know it’s over. The people have some idea that it’s over.

The scam won’t be over until politicians say its over.

And they are a very long way from saying that.

OK, so what was interesting about Q&A last night was poor old Jackie trying to articulate why she thought the “carbon thing” was a crock of shit. Unfortunately, the worst possible mouth-piece but to me it indicated that the sceptical view is there in the political ranks and will become increasingly public as the weight of public opinion heads in that direction too.

I had to laugh when poor old Jackie tried to say something to the effect that over half of scientists hold a sceptical views on AGW. That induced an instant derisive snort from the wong chap who stated with complete certainty that there was a consensus. She mustn’t have read the brief about that 97% bit of research being debunked – I wish Deadman’s son had been in the audience!

Ten years ago, Ed Feser, philosopher and author of works on Hayek, Locke and Nozick, was also a hardened atheist. Today he’s an Aristotelian & Thomist who writes (IMO) brilliant defences of theism (e.g. The Last Superstition and Aquinas.) I’ve not seen better in my life. I challenge anyone to point out where he’s obviously wrong. Here are links to two cracking lectures in which he sets about proving the existence of God by reason alone. He rehabilitates the traditional arguments, but sets them up against the Enlightenment-derived allegation that modern science has proved there’s no need for God, and he shows that, on the contrary, modern science, or any good science, actually points the way to God, if you consider its philosophical presuppostions. Even more, he shows how modern philosophers of science – even atheists – are beginning to concede that the current materialist consensus is woefully barren, and that Aristotelian concepts (which ground the theistic argument) may be needed to better explain how empirical science engages with the world.

Since you probably won’t be observing Holy Week , I cordially invite you to take some time off, grab a cuppa, and strap yourselves in for a refreshing two hours’ mental workout with these talks.

Agree or disagree, I don’t think you’ll find it to be a waste of time.

Empire Strikes Back
Though economics never accepted Marxists there were a lot of socialist economists from Keynes and Joan Robinson down. They are of course still with us – all those who want to use the “economist’s tool-kit” to prod economies in the direction they prefer. The Australian Treasury is heavily populated by these and led by one. Some like Nick Stern even manage to secure peerages for doing their masters’ bidding. Stern the magician who concocted a fairy tale even less grounded than Garnaut’s has the affrontary to call Tol “an outlier”.

And Perturbed.
It is pleasing to see that Lomborg is saying the same thing – while usually ok, he has in the past been a little too close to the warmistas, claiming for example, that within a decade or so there wd be no need for penalties as renewables would be competitive.

While our delight at the dismay of the of the socialist controllers and warmists is worth a high five we should avoid triumphalism – they still occupy all the vantage points in all western economies but Australia (and maybe NZ) and even in Australia they have a powerful destructive blocking position.

Simply calculate the loss of GDP of the US since ~1770 due to a rise of about 1C in the global temperature, or China since 1980 as a result of a rise of about 0.5C.

Wouldn’t work. See that’s PAST climate change, which manifested itself solely in hurricanes and droughts. FUTURE climate change is the magical kind – the one with 4x the CO2 sensitivity than the empirical past. That’s the kind that fucks everything – plants, the reef, the economy, any ships sailing to Qld, the snowfield. Shit, it’ll even destroy Uluru (somehow).

There is also a lot of guff in the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment about some possible scenarios where much higher warming takes place but this is about as likely as little green men being sighted in a Mars probe.

If the reports of close encounters are to be believed, we’re more likely to encounter a little green man from Mars with a probe!

They must know it’s over. The media must know it’s over. The people have some idea that it’s over.

Yes, “they” know it’s over, as the Rio+20 conference clearly demonstrated. The Rio conference concluded with a lengthy report talking about “sustainability”, and only one page of that report, towards the report’s end, mentioned CAGW.

So “they” have dropped CAGW and “sustainability” (whatever that may mean) will be the new religion. Those who are sufficiently wise will slowly back away from and distance themselves from CAGW, only those with personal ego involvement in the CAGW belief system, or those who are too stupid to know better, will cling to it while the new religion of sustainability takes its place.

Beer Whisperer’s law clearly states that the certainty of doom stated is inversely proportional to the uncertainty of it happening from a scientific perspective, otherwise known as “doubling-down on stupid”.

Then hows about we take the religious argument to the …to the…
What happened to the specialty blogs, Doomlord?
Bet they expired a slow death.
But it looks like there’s a bit of life yet. Hit ‘em with another lightning bolt, your majesty.

I’m not so sure they know it’s over, as in the those who have relentlessy pushed the great lie for the base several decades.

These people have a steel reinforced attachment to the Great Global Warming Racket – either ideologically or financially or both.

As I’ve written before, there are just 3 types of Global Warming believer: Dreamers, Deceivers and Dummies (I think I might do a guest post here if Sinc will allow it?).

The Dreamers can’t be swayed. They’re forever lost in the environmental Lala Land swamp.

Deceivers are those media & political class zealots and corporate cronies leeching off the public purse pushing the lie to advance their leftist, anti-industrialistation ideology and/or to fill their pockets through sleazy deals and carpetbagging.

However, I will concede that the third, and most numerous, group – the Dummies – have started becoming wise to the complete bullshit behind the Racket of Century.

The greenfilth wing of the IPCC is trying its hardest to keep the con going – ably assisted by their likeminded liars in the media here – but, with a true sceptical government in power here, it’s looking more and more likely that reason and logic – AND TRUTH! – will win the day.

Oh, they’re will forever be the straggling snakeoil salespeople who will find their niche amongst the deluded and the stupid, by the tide has swung and these lying pieces of horse manure will know that the majority have had their noses well and truly filled with their stench.

Sun Tzu is commonly misunderstood on this one, Eyrie. The admonition is for the enemy to be left a line of retreat to indefensible ground that looks like a way out of their predicament where they can be slaughtered at least cost.

I am looking forward to a continuation of father wong and the lambs short discusion on the 97% in the senate. I do hope that the lamb is not led to the slaughter but that she does get this message out because no one else at the moment has achieved this in the parliment.

Ten years ago, Ed Feser, philosopher and author of works on Hayek, Locke and Nozick, was also a hardened atheist. Today he’s an Aristotelian & Thomist who writes (IMO) brilliant defences of theism (e.g. The Last Superstition and Aquinas.) I’ve not seen better in my life.

Ah yes, hardened atheist converts…so believe.

The answer to that very good question, Demosthenes, is the purpose of these two lectures.

Sorry, you can’t get there (Christian God) from here (nature). But have no desire to debate it (again).

As I’ve written before, there are just 3 types of Global Warming believer: Dreamers, Deceivers and Dummies (I think I might do a guest post here if Sinc will allow it?).

I think the believers fall into three categories. These are the red-Greenies who hate everything about our western lifestyle and yearn for a Joe Stalin or an Adolph Hitler to take us back to the dark ages. The second category are the Al Gores of this world which include people like John Hewson and Malcolm Turnbull, they will go along with the scam as it’s a path to easy riches. The third category, the largest, are the stupid sheeple who make up the numbers. Some of them may be swayed by reason, most won’t.

Okay, I knew Amazon reviews had to be useful for something. A quote from Feser:

In an Aristotelian-Thomistic analysis, the relationship between a choice and the action it results in can be understood as an instance of formal-cum-final causation. The matter of “material cause” of the action is the sequence of neural firing patterns, muscular movements, and the like by means of which the action is carried out. The formal and final causes of the action–that which gives intelligible structure to the movements–is just the soul considered as a kind of form, and in particular the activities of thinking and willing that are distinctive of the soul’s intellective and volitional powers. The action is free precisely because it has this as its form, rather than having the form, say, of an involuntary muscular spasm. Nor are the intellect and will themselves determined by such things as physical law, because they exist as parts of the realm of formal and final causes, not material and efficient ones.

To which, the most appropriate response is: Ha, Ha, Ha, Ha.

Let me state Feser’s argument here in simpler terms: the action is free because of some imaginary thing, which I will call a “soul”, which decides what actions to take; more briefly, “because I say so”.

From Amazon reviewer Diogenes:

Consider some object, like an electron. According to Feser, in order for the electron to exist from moment to moment, something external must act on it. Something must “keep it going”. This is true he claims because it is not the nature of an electron to “keep going” on its own. Also, in order for an electron to behave in an orderly and consistent way, it must be guided by an external intelligence that provides the electron a “purpose”. Feser speculates that if an intelligent mind was not directing things, then the Moon might zip over to Mars for a bit and then come back. (He really writes that. Page 115.)

Here lies the problem with AGW and countless other theories – religion included – and thats you can philosophically argue any position. I haven’t watched the youtube vids of Feser, but if he argues from philosophical presuppostions, well you can prove anything you want even if its complete bollocks.

comparatively little is known about the climate of the late Miocene (~12–5 Myr ago), an interval with pco2 values of only 200–350 parts per million by volume but nearly ice-free conditions in the Northern Hemisphere2, 3 and warmer-than-modern temperatures on the continents4

The paper says cloud and ocean interaction and processes kept it hotter in the Late Miocene than now but that CO2 is making it hotter today because those natural factors no longer play a part.

Take that with a grain of salt. Natural variation, solar variation, orbital change or Milankovitch cycles, volcanoes, asteroids have all determined climate in the past and are continuing to do now. CO2 is plant food.

Wounded tomatoes are known to produce the volatile odour methyl-jasmonate as an alarm-signal. Plants in the neighbourhood can then detect the chemical and prepare for the attack by producing chemicals that defend against insects or attract predators.

How does that work with the plant communication chemicals I mentioned upthread, seeing as they don’t have heads? Clearly, information — there is a threat — is conveyed and acted upon — plants put out defensive chemicals.

Of all the carbon dioxide crap science what I hate most is those prophets of doom who are being paid by us the taxpayer setting up their BS carbon capture lurks on the side. Making charcoal to bury in abandoned mines, what a despicable lot of charlatans.
Man has adapted to climate change for 600,000 years. Most of those with only the most primitive of tools.

t always amuses me just how much of their time atheists use in contemplation of God.

It may amuse you Gab but I spend no time thinking about God (although he is occasionally mentioned in curses). Rebutting poor arguments for a creator does not mean I am “thinking about God”, it means I am investigating poor arguments in defence of its existence.

Early man also coped with levels of climate change that would have most warmies topping themselves.
Someone in Tasmania should give Jackie Lambie some scripts she can use to support her beliefs about climate change,she may not be Einstein but she is a senator elect and will appeal to a significant proportion of the electorate.

What? Where have you been for the last three decades or so where we’ve been told time and again that humans change the weather? The IPCC , led by it’s trashy novelist and railway engineer, is still saying it.

1. Senile Old Guy quoting some “Diogenes” on Amazon:Feser speculates that if an intelligent mind was not directing things, then the Moon might zip over to Mars for a bit and then come back. (He really writes that. Page 115.)

No, Feser doesn’t “really” write that, at least in my copy of The Last Superstition, p.115. It’s not as if Feser has it that the Moon is hankering to zip over to Mars only to be prevented by an Intelligent Mind traffic cop. It’s best to understand what Feser is saying at this point by reading what he’s said up to that point about final causality and regularly observed patterns in nature. Suffice it to say that what Feser is saying here is something that even esteemed atheist philosophers, such as Thomas Nagel are now agreeing with.

[Hey, you'll get a good grasp if you watch those lectures I mentioned. Even if you disagree, you'll see how silly that "Diogenes" distortion is.]

2. Demosthenes @ 1.42:I suspect the case is made for a Creator, not specifically the Christian god.

Correct. One can’t argue with certainty to Christian doctrines about God (e.g. the Trinity and the Incarnation) from nature, just to the Being whose existence makes sense of nature itself (according to theists). Christian doctrines are, thus, “super natural”: we have to be taught them by God speaking directly to us, not through pondering the natural world and its laws. [BTW: This doesn't mean it's "irrational" or acting in "blind faith", as some assert, to believe Christian doctrines. If God really tells us these truths, then it's perfectly reasonable to believe them and irrational not to - after all, what better authority could there be? Likewise, on an everyday level, I believe my oncologist when he tells me confidently that the lump on my back isn't malignant. It's perfectly reasonable, not "blind faith", to believe this just on his say so and not through any study I - with no medical expertise - have done of the lump itself.]

I’ve got an arrangement with God. I’ll take His name in vain any time I feel like it, and He can do the same with mine.

Looks like we shall just have to agree to disagree about the God scam, and I shan’t raise it again so long as JohnW and DB drop the proseletysing for an archaic chunk of pointless metaphysics. Trying to convince them is manifestly a waste of time. Meanwhile we are in furious agreement on the AGW scam. It’s called common ground and I only wish it were more common. Still, it looks as if reality is breaking through.

The message is that ordinary people will behave badly in an era of intensified climate change.
All this makes sense, unless you go back to the premise and note that climate change is itself violence. Extreme, horrific, longterm, widespread violence.
Climate change is anthropogenic – caused by human beings, some much more than others. We know the consequences of that change: the acidification of oceans and decline of many species in them, the slow disappearance of island nations such as the Maldives, increased flooding, drought, crop failure leading to food-price increases and famine, increasingly turbulent weather. (Think Hurricane Sandy and the recent typhoon in the Philippines, and heat waves that kill elderly people by the tens of thousands.)
Climate change is violence.

I can accept that increase an input has an impact, hence there is likely to be some temperature influence of increasing CO2 and other greenhouse gases. But I believe the models are flawed and the associated for nits result in exaggerated model output. I also believe that while the models could be fixed to better reflect temperature change, they certainly have very low capability of measuring meaningful (as in statistically significantly different) change in extreme weather. That is just charlatan behaviour.

I also believe that the touted cures are all worse than the disease. Sometimes you just have to live with it.

cohenite
#1266231, posted on April 15, 2014 at 5:47 pm
Is there anyone on this thread who actually believes accepts AGW.

Hammy?

I don’t get it; AGW is still going gangbusters in the MSM and academia and among the political class. None of those good folk here?

You do so get it. AGW is a Political mechanism. The MSM and Academia are Left Wing ideologues. These people produce nothing but words and they take their politics like religion, devoutly and with scorn for heathens.

Christianity doesn’t cost me $5000 a year and it doesn’t make me wear a black shroud!

Me. But not CAGW. I’m in the Pielke Snr school. There are a lot of forms of AGW…land use, UHIE, CO2, albedo changes. None are dangerous based on the data I see.

As to the discussion of religion, I’m yet to see anyone raise the data on that either, which is why I’ve not said anything. Kids can argue in a playground but adults make logical arguments from data. Which is what I try to do with climate science. I suggest you read and study the Bible. I’ve been studying the climate data for 7 years and the Bible for 40 years, and no one on this thread has scratched the paint on its contents or on the person of Jesus of Nazareth in both the Old and New Testaments.

In summary the Bible covers everything so far discussed and also covers the religiosity of the climateers – which is straight out of Romans plus a touch of 2 Cor 4:3.

When people stop believing in God, they don’t believe in nothing — they believe in anything.

Bruce of N: I like Chesterton’s writing, particularly Father Brown, but so what? He writes well, and creates interesting puzzles, but I don’t have him down as one of the world’s greatest thinkers.

I’ve been an atheist for a long, long time and I certainly don’t believe in anything. Nor do I believe in nothing.

Gab asked upthread: Why argue? Because of this: stupid statements about the “beliefs” of atheists.

If you just talked about God, I wouldn’t bother (well, perhaps I might a bit), but you must make claims about what atheists believe. Or say what some bit of the Bible tells what we must do about some event or action. Oddly, when it comes to AGW, you can find people using the Bible and Christianity to argue that we must act, and you can find others arguing that we don’t have to.

Good site Bruce. AGW means warming from anthropogenic sources; I can’t swallow that despite slight warming since about 1850 or when ever you want to draw an end to the LIA. 2 dominant reasons; firstly the lack of a correlation let alone a causal connection between CO2 and temperature; and secondly considerable doubt about whether all or any of the increase in CO2 is from human sources.

Cohenite – As you know I’ve modelled the Central England Temperature record and on that basis CO2 does appear to have a small effect. That is consistent with its chemistry. It is an IR absorber. The IR has to be there to absorb however. It mostly isn’t, except perhaps over deserts. When there is a lot of water around IR heats H2O and forms water vapour. That diffuses to the troposphere and lower stratosphere where it condenses. This releases the latent heat of evaporation above most of the CO2, so the IR is mainly radiated to space.

So yes, I’m happy that CO2 and other GHG’s are greenhouse gases (net of O2 consumed in CO2 production). But CAGW doesn’t make sense on the data.

My model is still doing rather well although the temperatures so far this year have been warm in England. Over the ditch North America on the other hand has been extremely cold.

BoN, there is no doubt that CO2 is a greenhouse gas, so human beings are doing some (minuscule) warming, but we might be doing some cooling too. The net effect is anybody’s guess but almost certainly small. Politicians can’t think about numbers except when counting votes. I regard AGW as undemonstrated and CAGW as ridiculous.

I also take the philosophy of engineers to heart: don’t meddle with things you don’t understand, particularly with complex systems having lots of feedback loops such as climates, economies and societies. Trying to understand them is good if done very carefully. Lefties think it’s fine to poke them with sticks. I think they should practise on grizzly bears.

could we not achieve this result for the squealers by simply expatriating them to the developing world? They would have the environment they desire and we would not have to give up the one we desire.
They are all from the ‘developing world’. They use the First World’s money to employ inmates of the First World’s aimless university unemployment relief scheme for persons who lack the fortitude to participate in the real world to create their mythology.
Why are the LNP and its international equivalents so scared of imposing performance requirements on academia and the arts? Lets be honest, no one other than Lucy Turnbull would give a stuff if a bunch of humanities academics and non-commercial artists stopped receiving taxpayer funded unemployable relief benefits. This is the weakness in political Party analysis, because they have made themselves beholden to these parasites, they fail to understand that Ilio, running his marginal shop down the street, will shrug if he reads in the SMH that a bunch of incomprehensible university departments are sent down the road.
‘Professor’, in its modern misuse, is the most dangerous term since ‘Nazi’.

It’s happening right now Eyrie. The AGW crowd are desperately looking for a way out, and they think it is Ocean Acidification. Unfortunately it’s not a defensible position because it’s too easily proven to be a scam. They’re drowning while the movers and shakers make off with the loot.

Cohenite – David makes a very small but important error. If you correlate TSI with temperature you get as a β a value which is potentially contaminated with unknown variables. In the case of TSI, while it correlates well with temperature, it is too small for a direct relationship. Therefore when you get a β from the regression fit it is too large for pure TSI alone on physical principles (as I understand it). That is the argument the climateers use all the time to beat on us (eg Soon 2005).

My model is actually a reverse of a multiple regression. I use multiple regression for statistical models for work, with some good practical successes. But all regression is prone to the omitted variable fallacy, since you have to know the significant variables beforehand or you can be fooled by an unidentified covarying variable.

So what I do (which David touches on) is I use the empirical overall forcing by the Sun. The parameter I use is the correlation of previous solar cycle length with temperature. You can see it with a simple graphing of temperature against the solar cycle length of the previous cycle, which I’ve done here for the CET and HadCRUT 3v.

That way you collect all the solar variance, ie TSI + x, whatever x is. It may be the Svensmark mechanism, but you don’t need to know what it is, just that it exists.

That graph of pSCL vs temperature for CET and HadCRUT is raw and crude. For my model I use the study by Butler & Johnston of the Amargh long term temperature data, with filtering. The assumption I use is that Amargh is very similar to the Central England Temperature location, so like is being compared with like.

Its a subtle difference. I think of it as working bottom up, accreting significant variables and seeing what they come out like, whereas David’s is the classic approach of top down regression. Which is fine if you know all the variables.

Cohenite – I should add that I use SSN for intracycle temperature variations, but I do so in a why which normalises the variations to net zero anomaly over the solar cycle. That way SSN does not act as a variable, more like window dressing. But the result is a pretty good simulation of the SSN modulation of temperatures over each solar cycle…with some equally interesting exceptions.

That being the case Bruce we have no Equilibrium sensitivity in the pipeline?

Cohenite – My view is that equilibration is empirically pretty quick, decades not centuries. If it were long you wouldn’t have the pronounced cycling of the ~60 year cycle in the oceans. It would be damped if there was a slow equilibration. The ~60 year cycle caused about 70% of the temperature rise since 1970 because it bottomed then and topped out in the early 2000′s.

So ECS is close to TCR, about 0.7 C/doubling. Lindzen has ECS at 1 and TCR at 0.7 C. I defer to his expertise, but even at an ECS of 1 we’re in no danger except from the climate kiddies who want to enslave us all.

If you correlate TSI with temperature you get as a β a value which is potentially contaminated with unknown variables. In the case of TSI, while it correlates well with temperature, it is too small for a direct relationship. Therefore when you get a β from the regression fit it is too large for pure TSI alone on physical principles (as I understand it).

I think David would agree with you Bruce which is why he uses an accumulative TSI. He notes:

As an example of the accumulative model, consider that without temperature-dependent losses, an increase of 0:1W=m2 for one year would accumulate 3:1×106 Joules of heat (31×106 sec in a Yr)
to the ocean, heating the ocean mixed zone to 50m by 0.018K (4.2 J/gK). Note that while this
would give an apparent climate sensitivity of 0.18K/Watt, the apparent sensitivity would increase
to 1.8K/Watt after 10 years. The main difference between the model and the conventional view is
that climate sensitivity is a rate of the form K/Watts/Yr, and not K/Watt. For heat to accumulate
over long periods, the heat loss from the ocean must not be strongly temperature dependent.
Thus, the accumulative model is consistent with the conventional assessment of high (or positive)
water-vapor feedbacks (e.g. [Dessler, 2010]). Clearly, over longer periods the model could produce
glacial/interglacial variations in global temperature.

Sure. He is still evolving a β using least squares regression and therefore is wrapping the solar-cloud modulation into accumulative TSI. Integral SSN also works, but suffers the same issue. While the statistical approach is leaky the climateers can attack the methodology. We have to be Caesar’s wife.

Michael Beenstock and Yaniv Reingewertz in their 2009 paper concluded any effect CO2 increase has on temperature is temporary and not related to the absolute level of CO2. As David Stockwell noted this is why B&R find the derivative of rfCO2 appropriate in a linear model and not rfCO2. This makes a big difference projected forward, as the effects of CO2 increase are short-lived. It must keep increasing exponentially for temperature to increase linearly. If CO2 only increases linearly then temperature is constant.

Anyway I’ve always wondered how ECS can be right given Beers law and the logarithmic decline in emissivity of CO2.

any effect CO2 increase has on temperature is temporary and not related to the absolute level of CO2

Cohenite – I don’t agree with that because of the mechanism I mentioned at 6:58 pm. CO2 has a well known absorbance spectrum. No question. But if there isn’t much IR to absorb it will then have less empirical forcing than the Arrhenius theoretical ECS value. Zero forcing would require no IR at all, which is impossible. So B&R can’t be right (although I’ve not read their paper, I’m arguing from first principles).

This is independent of the cloud issue of diffraction of incident solar radiation to space. Anthony mentioned the cloud issue in conjunction with Roy Spencer the other day, and Roy Spencer goes further on his blog yesterday.

Bruce, I agree CO2 has a forcing, laboratory tested and theoretically underpinned. B&R’s cointegration analysis I think confirms the hiatus between the laboratory and theory and reality. I looked at B&R and differencing when they first arrived on the scene 4 years ago. Unlike you I don’t have a science background so have to learn this stuff at the time and then promptly forget it.

But as I recall one of the central ideas around cointegration is that series that require differencing to become stationary are very prone to ‘spurious regression’. Series that are oriented on zero are called I(0) — no differencing is required for them to be stationary. Series like temperature and solar that require one differencing to become stationary are called I(1). Series like CO2 that require two differences to become stationary are called I(2).

F&R clearly reject any long term relationship between the I(2) greenhouse forcings and I(1) temperatures. They furthermore find that solar irradiance is by far the biggest determinant of temperatures (very clear cointegrating relationship) while a permanent CO2 increase only has a temporary effect.

Cohenite – I’ve quickly scanned the first paper by B&R and I see they do not mention the ~60 year cycle. Some of the anomalies they mention are explained by it (eg page 10). The ~60 year cycle was responsible for almost 70% of the “warming” from 1970-2000. Leave it out and you are chasing your tail trying to fit CO2 and solar irradiance to the temperature record.

SOG:
But mostly I don’t argue.
Indeed, that would require some understanding of the issues, at the very least. as Hugh demonstrated.

A cheap shot, d_b. How do you know that I lack “some understanding of the issues”? I take an empirical, i.e. evidence based, approach to issues. Some think, incorrectly, that this does not require philosophical and metaphysical arguments and assumptions. To the contrary, much debate about the philosophy of science is entirely about these arguments and assumptions.

Take a discipline with which I have some familiarity: statistics and probability. What is the chance that a tossed coin will come down heads? Most, if not all, would say 50%. To justify this, some would claim that each side has an equal chance of being up. But that requires largely untestable assumptions about physical processes. So we do the experiment: we toss the coin over and over and track the results. These tend towards 50% heads, so we conclude that the results will converge and confirm the theoretical value. This is the “frequentest” approach to probability. It also requires that we accept untestable assumptions. And so it goes.

I largely avoid debates about the existence of God because I have read through, and taken part in, many and rarely do I see anyone shift from their originally stated position. Further, I am comfortable with my own beliefs, having come to them over many years, but see no need to covert others to them.

A cheap shot? And your response to Feser on a site he has never frequented was what? Courageous and disinterested?

How do you know that I lack “some understanding of the issues”?

I read your response.

I largely avoid debates about the existence of God because I have read through, and taken part in, many and rarely do I see anyone shift from their originally stated position.

That is because, as I suggested in response to dot, arguments that convince the intellect do not necessarily compel the will, particularly where the will is already set against it. Feser’s arguments had a profound effect on me in part because I read his work at a time when I was actually open to the arguments both at the level of intellect and will. Had I read it twenty years earlier, I would have been dead against it however convincing to the intellect it was because my will would have been set against it. Ten years earlier, I might have found it interesting to the intellect but ultimately indifferent at the level of will.

B&R’s cointegration analysis I think confirms the hiatus between the laboratory and theory and reality

Hardly any climate change stuff did this until recently. The forcing of CO2 drops usually by about 50% when proper time series analysis appropriate techniques are used.

F&R clearly reject any long term relationship between the I(2) greenhouse forcings and I(1) temperatures. They furthermore find that solar irradiance is by far the biggest determinant of temperatures (very clear cointegrating relationship) while a permanent CO2 increase only has a temporary effect.

Usually you will have a short run and long run relationship as well. I take this to mean they found that CO2 drops out of the long run relationship.

My two cents on this topic – I regard all of the man made religions as absolutely preposterous and in islam’s case, downright evil. I used to be a militant atheist, but have become agnostic over the last few years. The whole creation/existence of the universe thing simply can’t be rationalised away.

I still remember poor old McLean, Carter and de Freitas being castigated by Foster, aka tamino, for having the temerity to suggest Natural Variation [NV] could produce a trend in addition to variation which as Foster argued was only an oscillation; see Stockwell’s summary of the dispute.

Now of course with the temperature pause [sic] the AGW scientific establishment is falling over itself to use NV as a ‘mask’ of AGW temperature trend; see for instance Nature.

I’m from the Bjorn Lomborg school of thought. I accept that AGW may be real but I think the consequences are hysterically overplayed and they’re a million other things that we can spend our money on or worry about e.g.eridication of malaria.

Besides I am optimistic that human ingenuity will win out in the end. I rest easily at night.

Atheism is a religion. In the same way being bald is a hairstyle.
In the same way that non-smokers are a type of smoker!
In the same way that teetotallers are a kind of alcoholic.

I asked Abbott if Atheism (quite literary a lack of belief) was a religion (belief/worship etc) and he said no, but they do represent a valued constituency.

Back to the topic at hand. Yes I believe that Mankind can effect the climate; land clearing can be linked to reduced rainfalls, largescale overgrazing can damage the soil and cause a dust storms, massive sulphur/polutive emissions in Asia can cause mass amounts of smog which can block out sunlight and lower the temperature experienced by peeps on the ground.

Then there’s the urban heat island effect where people in built up areas experience higher on average temperatures to that experienced by people in earlier periods when those urban areas were somewhat less built up.

Doesn’t make much of a case for the primacy of CO2 emissions (or any other singular gas humans might expel), especially when we get all of our energy inputs (even that stored in fossil fuels) from our Sun.

So logically, if our Sun’s output varies then that too will impact our climate, with some scientists suggesting that the Sun’s Solar Cycles are the most important viable impacting on our climate.

Anecdotally; a long time ago I dated a physics student and a student of evolutionary psychology (not at the same time), both of these sciencey types believed that GW was bunk.

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Liberty Quotes

Eternal vigilance and a short fuse is what the electorate must have.— Infidel Tiger